In the lead-up to what was described as a “megapicket” last Friday—at Lifford Lane, one of the three yards for striking Birmingham council bin workers—its pseudo-left organisers proclaimed a mass event marking the return of trade union struggle.

The Strike Map group wrote in the Stalinist Morning Star that “a mass demonstration of solidarity” would involve “thousands of trade unionists from across the country” joining “the picket lines in Birmingham.”

A list of national and local trade union backers was breathlessly hailed including Aslef, BFAWU, Birmingham National Education Union, Birmingham Trades Union Congress, Birmingham UCU, Birmingham Unite Community, Birmingham Unison, CWU West Midlands, Equity, Fire Brigades Union, PCS, TSSA. Other backers listed were the Socialist Party’s National Network of Shop Stewards (NSSN) vehicle and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) wrote that the rally would turn the tide against Labour Party-run Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) plan to slash workers’ pay and conditions and “be a show of strength against the strike-breaking operation.”

Instead, estimates of the actual turnout ranged from between 200-400. Delegations of workers—including, firefighters and striking National Health Service workers from Gloucestershire—were the exception. The majority of participants were affiliated to one or another pseudo-left group.

For them, this performative “solidarity” aimed at providing a cover for the trade union bureaucracy.

Much was made in speeches and subsequent reports of the fact that the picket had forced the council to close the depot for the day. But this was a minor recalibration in BCC’s strikebreaking operation, which went ahead uninterrupted at the two other yards. The council announced bin collections from Lifford Lane depot would take place on the weekend instead.

The next day, BCC boasted, “All available waste wagons have been deployed from our 3 depots citywide this morning.”

Keynote speakers were Daniel Kebede, National Education Union general secretary; Mick Whelan, leader of the train driver’s union Aslef; Steve Wright, the newly elected general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU); and Unite union national lead officer Onay Kasab.

Whelan claimed the Aslef leadership had won the “longest rail strike in history” in 2024. In fact, two years of strikes ended in a sellout deal with the rail firms, backed by the Starmer government, agreeing a pay deal of just over 14 percent spread over three years—after train drivers had lost an average of around £4,900 in pay during strike days.

Whelan said he brought solidarity as, “You stood by us when they couldn’t beat us. And they tried to bring in laws for Minimum Service Levels and we defeated the Tories on that.”

Again, the Tories didn’t need to reach for the anti-strike laws on the books because they were able to rely on the union bureaucracies closing down strike after strike based on rock-bottom pay deals.

Today Birmingham council, backed by the Starmer Labour government elected with the support of all the major trade union leaders, is enforcing a brutal strikebreaking operation including the use of agency workers as scabs, enforced by police and security squads manning barricades at depots to prevent any effective picketing.

FBU leader Wright trumpeted that his union had rejected a call from the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Birmingham, Roger Harmer, to break the strike. But he could say nothing of any mobilisation of his own members in industrial action to defeat the council’s scabbing operation, breaking the anti-strike laws banning secondary action. Instead he portrayed the Birmingham Labourites and Starmer’s cabinet in Downing Street as open to a settlement defending the pay of bin workers.

Wright’s message to BCC was “respect your workers, the essential workers. Get round the table and make a deal and resolve this.” This is of a council which, before Unite entered into further talks at the conciliation service ACAS on May 1, announced that it would not only cut the pay of loaders but that of drivers, by up to £8,000.

As “a union that is affiliated to the Labour Party right now,” Wright’s message was that the government “can get off the fence and they can intervene.” Every refuse worker in Birmingham knows that Starmer and company are not “on the fence” but are openly endorsing BCC’s attacks.

No mention of the ACAS talks, or the attack on drivers, was made by Unite official Kasab, a supporter of the Socialist Party. Declaring that Birmingham council was £3 billion in debt to the government and paying £250 million a year in interest on it, he stated instead, “Any money adviser will tell you the same, restructure the debt… a solution exists.”

Kasab reeled off his usual claims that the bins strike was close to victory, as was supposedly invariably the case under the leadership of General Secretary Sharon Graham. “I make no apology again for pointing out the fact that our union since August, 2021 has been involved in over 1,500 disputes, winning at least 85 percent of those.”

Most of the disputes he alluded to have ended in deals which never make up for the pay workers have lost. Many end in outright defeat, as was the case of the Coventry bin workers in 2022.

Another Unite official, Pete Randall, who played a key role in the sellout of the Coventry bin workers in 2022, had the gall to proclaim that as a victory.

A WSWS reporting team distributed its latest article, “Birmingham bin workers strike enters eighth week, Labour council demands driver pay cuts”, warning against Unite’s entry into ACAS negotiations.

The terms union officials are pushing for as a settlement go against everything the 350 refuse workers are waging their fight to defeat. Unite has effectively accepted the elimination of the safety-critical WRCO, role with the loss of 150 jobs based on compensation terms, and opened the door to the £8,000 annual pay cut for 200 refuse drivers through downgrading.

Commenting on Sharon Graham’s claim that a deal was “in touching distance,” a refuse driver responded: “That ended when they decided to take £10,000 from us. You’re talking about people being made homeless and not having enough to live on.”

Other striking bin workers at the Lifford Lane depot were growing wary over the secretive negotiations, with one driver stating, “We tried to keep ACAS out of this dispute. We did everything we could to stop the strike breaking.”

As a WSWS reporter spoke to workers who had asked about the outcome of the Coventry bin strike, a Socialist Workers Party member interjected to claim that the struggle had been led by the “rank and file”, doing everything to avoid explaining Unite’s final deal with Labour-run Coventry City Council.

The WSWS reporter explained in response that Unite officials had maintained actual control from the outset. While loaders voted to strike (in an indicative ballot), only drivers were brought out over pay, dividing the workforce. Unite did not lift a finger to mobilise its wider membership to stop the six-month strike-breaking operation launched by Coventry’s Labour council and accepted all its demands based on productivity strings through ACAS in the final deal.

The SWP member’s rejoinder was “Fuck off”—the reaction of political bankrupts whose only concern is to shield the union bureaucracy from an actual rank-and-file challenge.

Another refuse driver said: “We’re being kept in the dark. We feel like pawns between Unite and the Labour government. Why is the union still funding them? If this goes through against us, it’ll be a disaster for every worker.”

The stage-managed “megapicket” provided an opportunity for union leaders to pose before the cameras with their hollow declarations of solidarity, while surrender terms are plotted behind closed doors at ACAS.

Genuine solidarity means the mass mobilisation of the working class to defeat the state operation against the Birmingham strikers, not appeals to the “better nature” of the Starmer Labour government. This demands a rank-and-file rebellion to break free from the shackles imposed by the union bureaucracy and expanding the fight to other workers facing similar attacks throughout the country, always with the direct connivance of the Labourites and their trade union leader allies.